Researchers Elizabeth Belding of Computer Science and Lisa Parks of Film & Media Studies Receive $1.2 Million for New Wireless Network Technology That Will Bring Zambia Online

The city of Macha, located in the southern
province of Zambia in sub-Saharan Africa, has a population of roughly
130,000. It also has Internet connectivity, but for only a small group of
users - perhaps 300 in all. With a $1.2 million grant from the National
Science Foundation (NSF), UC Santa Barbara scholars Elizabeth Belding and
Lisa Parks are embarking on a project that will bring the information
superhighway to the homes and businesses of everyone in the local community.

“The idea of the work is to build wireless networks solutions to help
bridge the digital divide and bring more people online,” said Belding, a
professor of computer science. “Our goal is to improve performance, get
connectivity to everyone - not just a limited subset of the population -
and improve the user experience.” To accomplish that, Belding's research
group is working at the frontiers of wireless networking, developing a lot
of technology that, at this point, doesn't exist.

“In terms of wireless links and how data is sent from computer to computer
within the community, we are in the process of developing wireless network
technology to utilize new spectrum,” Belding continued. “With radio, for
example, each channel is on a different frequency. Radio utilizes different
spectrum from TV, which uses different spectrum from Wi-Fi. New spectrum is
becoming available that hasn't been leveraged yet, but has really good
properties for what we want to do.”
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